Research
Publications
By Research Area
Economics of Education I: Education and Economic Prosperity
Economics of Education II: Schools and Student Achievement
Economics of Education III: Educational Determinants beyond Schools
Economics of Growth and Development
Public Opinion and the Political Economy of Education Policy
Other
Google Scholar: >50,000 citations, h-index 92
Overview of My Research
Research is ultimately about developing ideas and testing their relevance for our understanding of the real world. In this, I am mostly driven by the following (closely related) questions: What determines long-run prosperity? What determines educational achievement? Maybe some of my main ideas are
that the skills of the people are crucial for long-run economic growth, and that we can measure them by early international student achievement tests;
that institutional structures of the school system are important for student performance, and that we can test this with the micro data of international student achievement tests;
that individualized support from adult mentors can strongly improve the labor-market prospects of adolescents who lack powerful family support because of their highly disadvantaged background, something we showed with a field experiment; and
that the educational impulse stemming from Martin Luther’s Bible-reading goals, rather than Max Weber’s Protestant ethic, can explain Protestants’ economic success, and that we can show this with 19th-century Prussian micro-regional data that we digitized from archives.
But there is a lot more:
Using early international student achievement tests, my research with Eric Hanushek shows that the skills of the population are a decisive factor for the long-run growth of countries. Differences in the "knowledge capital" of nations can mostly account for the East Asian miracle and the Latin American growth puzzle, as well as for growth differences among developed countries. Knowledge capital also proves important for an understanding of differences in economic development across US states. The large growth effects of educational achievement imply that low educational achievement has huge economic costs.
Also at the individual level, people's skills prove to be an important determinant of income, employment, and success on the labor market. Various skill signals on the CV have positive effects on labor-market entry. Because of permanent technological and structural change, the advantage of vocational education over general education in the school-to-work transition can turn into a disadvantage over the life-cycle. Despite the importance of lifelong learning, unconditional vouchers for adult education do not prove particularly effective. Lifetime returns can be estimated for various educational degrees. All these results combine into a strong economic case for education.
Taking the perspective of economic history, we study the importance of education for Protestant economic history, for industrialization, for the fertility transition, and for secularization.
My research using micro data of international student tests such as PISA and TIMSS shows that institutional structures such as exam systems, school autonomy, competition from privately operated schools, and tracking are important determinants of student achievement and thus of the efficiency and equity of school systems.
While teachers play an important role in this, the effects of class size, computers, and spending levels are rather limited.
In international comparisons, early childhood education and later tracking prove important factors for equality of opportunity. In the United States, the socioeconomic achievement gap has been large and but not increasing for four decades. The gap in educational aspirations does not close by providing information on the benefits and costs of higher education.
Beyond schools, there are many further determinants of educational outcomes. Mentoring is an important approach to improve the labor-market prospects of disadvantaged adolescents. As deeper determinants of educational inputs, the intertemporal cultural factors patience and risk-taking are fundamental to international differences in student achievement. The Covid school closures appear to have hit low-achieving students particularly hard.
Over the educational life-cycle, my research covers various aspects of early childhood education, schools, vocational education, higher education, and adult education.
My research on why some countries grow much faster than others - and why some countries are thus rich and others poor - mainly focuses on the importance of the educational achievement of the population - the "knowledge capital" of nations.
In addition, I have worked on the effects of the internet and of structural change on economic growth.
Several aspects of my research have relevance for developing countries. Our analysis of global universal basic skills suggests that at least two-thirds of the world’s youth do not reach basic skill levels. Thus, the evidence on knowledge capital suggests that universal basic skills should be the most important development goal. Using Peruvian data, we show the importance of teacher knowledge for student achievement. We have also estimated education production functions in various developing countries using data from different international student achievement tests.
As an alternative to Max Weber's thesis that a specific Protestant ethic was responsible for the economic success of Protestants, my research with Sascha Becker suggests a "human capital theory of Protestant economic history": Luther's request that all Christians should be able to read the Bible by themselves triggered a push for education that ultimately also had economic consequences. Our evidence from 19th-century Prussia suggests that the better education of Protestants can account for most of their economic lead over Catholics.
Beyond denominational differences, our research using digitized Prussian micro-regional data of the 19th century also shows that the basic education of the population had an important impact on industrialization.
Furthermore, education had a strong effect on fertility decline and thus on the demographic transition.
In additional work, we show that the long-gone Habsburg Empire still leaves traces in Eastern Europe today in terms of trust in public institutions and corruption.
In another project, we show that the later border between the communist East and the capitalist West Germany is already visible in many socio-economic characteristics in pre-World War II data, suggesting that German division and reunification do not provide a straightforward natural experiment to study enduring "effects" of communism.
Another case of historical persistence is that the resistance of the Catholic church against the emerging state school system in the second half of the 19th century is still visible in larger sectors of privately operated schools today, which in turn contribute to better student achievement.
Beyond our research on the consequences of the Reformation for the educational and economic development of Protestants, we use unique data on participation in holy communion to show that increased attendance of advanced schools was an important determinant of secularization in the form of reduced church attendance at the turn to the 20th century. By contrast, we do not find evidence of a causal effect of increased income on secularization.
In additional work, we show that Protestantism had a causal effect on higher suicide proneness. This effect had more to do with reduced social cohesion than with theological doctrine.
We also prepared an extensive survey on the role of religion in economic history.
Turning to contemporary analyses, my research shows that reforms that terminated compulsory religious education in German schools reduced religiosity of affected students in adulthood and also affected their family and labor-market outcomes.
Internationally, competition from privately operated schools that emerged from the resistance of the Catholic church against the emerging state school system in the second half of the 19th century positively affect students' academic achievement.
In the ifo Education Survey, we regularly collect data on the opinion of Germans on various topics of education policy. Using survey experiments, we show that providing information can affect public opinion on topics such as university tuition, education spending, educational inequality, educational aspirations, and family policies. International comparison of public opinion can help build a comparative political economy of education policy. Methodological contributions study the role of incentives in belief elicitation and the representativeness of internet surveys.
In contrast to the widely held believe that the internet could undermine the social capital of the population, we find positive effects of the emerging high-speed internet on social capital. Further research deals with the effect of broadband expansion on economic growth and with the effect of using computers and the internet in schools.
In a study on the children of guest workers, we analyze the effect of regional concentration on the integration of migrant children.
In older work, I have studied whether innovation increases firms' export performance.